It's impossible to deny that sexism and homophobia (and other types of discrimination) are alive and kicking in Religion, with the two main examples being male female segregation in Islam, and homophobia in Christianity (Westboro baptist church, need I say more?)

Fascists and the Right in general are always critical of Islam, leaving the left to look like the apologists! And vice versa on Christianity.

"It's impossible to deny that sexism and homophobia (and other types of discrimination) are alive and kicking in Religion..."

i wouldn't go that far...plenty of people deny it. just sayin'. :)

personally, i try to combat those types of attitudes (sexist, homophobic) when i encounter them in daily life, whether the person identifies as "religious" or not. i don't have the desire to try to change any hierarchical organizations.

like ba@, i would fight those attitudes when i come across them, regardless of who/what/where.

i would not try to stop an anti-liberatory institution that is built upon discrimination from some subset of its discriminations; i would rather see that institution destroyed. as an anarchist, i would not waste my time on either the action (reform) or the target (religion).

on the other hand, if the target of the discrimination is not a follower of (the discriminatory) religion, all bets are off, and any action taken by the target (and allies) in defense may be appropriate. especially if the target is an anarchist! ;-)

if folks who believe in and are part of that institution care to fight the institutional hierarchy in order to stop some specific discrimination, i say have at it! i hear there's a downright liberal in the vatican these days.

the problem i have with this question and all questions like these is that homophobia and sexism are just shared psychological phenomenon (as tiqqun calls it...metaphysics). When someone is making a racist argument, for example that blacks deserve to be in prison, if they argue they're not racist, then they probably believe themselves...they will make arguments often about "culture" and how we need to "teach them manners" or some shit...there are actually black conservatives who argue this since they believe in white values so much.

It's more important to try to understand psychological problems rather than put "psychotics", "people-with-attention-deficit-disorder", "racists", sexists" into boxes. I find the comment "you're racist/sexist!" to be as confusing as it is empty for the person hearing it. I used to think racism was an artifact of the past until i got more into radical political thinking, i would hardly call that racism